Hotel room or retail vignette?

Debby Morse, SPECIAL TO THE EXAMINER

Published 4:00 am, Wednesday, June 9, 1999

1999-06-09 04:00:00 PDT SAN FRANCISCO -- How's this for a dumb idea? Open a glitzy new hotel for business travelers, outfit it with the latest in telecommunications equipment - and have all the interiors designed by a bunch of people who've never designed hotels before.

Maybe not so dumb, to judge by the newly opened W San Francisco at Third and Howard streets.

"Everything is doable. Everything is possible," says Theresa Fatino, vice president of brand development and design for Starwood Design Group, the aesthetics team for W Hotels.

She moves around the soigne cocoa, black and ivory, business-class king-size guest room, picking up one lovely object after another.

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"We had this soap dish designed to fit the soap," she says of the dramatically simple rectangular resin saucer. "You don't know how many blue soap dishes we looked at. We finally decided to make our own. I love that little thing."

That doesn't sound much like the traditional procurement of supplies. Most hotels look as if they've been furnished from what David Rockwell, architect for the recently opened W hotel in New York, calls "catalogs of Ugly Hotel Stuff." (The San Francisco W was designed by S.F. architectural firm Hornberger & Worstell.)

"Right," says Fatino. "How many of those padded leatherette ice buckets can you stand? Look at ours," she practically chortles, wielding a graceful, slender vessel. "We were going to use a silver-plated bucket, but it tarnished. So we had this made. It's nickel."

"Barry Sternlicht wanted something for the younger, hip visitor, not something threatening," according to ShopWorks' Dan Worden. He wanted a more distinctive outlook, "something comfortable, casual and chic."

Worden and partner Kimberly Nunn aimed for a "living room" kind of flow in the lobby, featuring cushy chairs and quirky couches, black faux-fur throw pillows and low tables furnished with chess games and art books.

"I didn't have hotel experience before," says Worden, who was president of store design for Banana Republic,

"but now I have seven of them."

Among the items specially commissioned for W guest rooms are the soap dish and its shiny metal counterpart, a curvy little plate next to the bed that holds fortune cookies. The fortunes themselves are unique to W, frisky suggestions like "Sleep naked," "Dream in color" and

"Dance with abandon." They are printed on luscious red paper; "From hotel to hotel, you'll see a little, sexy red accent here and there," Fatino reveals.

Sometimes a perfectly desirable product is already on the market, such as the spiffy chrome wastebasket and makeup mirror in the bathroom. "When you can find something decent, we'll grab it," Fatino allows.

Other details are a huge full-length mirror framed with silver-leafed wood, a KitchenAid minicoffee machine and a "pillow-top" mattress consisting of a regular mattress with a soft upper pad sewn right in.

Developing bed linens took about six months, says Fatino.

"Not having hotel experience, we had to dive in and learn the process." The team worked with a textile mill to make the all-cotton duvet cover fabric in a mocha color Fatino loved in a suit she saw.

They lobbied for cotton sheets as well, but "to be practical - 100 percent cotton is going to take a beating in the laundry," Fatino concedes. They had to hire a laundry consultant to learn how hot water, chemical detergents and dryer heat affect fabrics. Now the hotel chain has laundry standards for dealing with the 250-thread-count, half cotton-half polyester sheets.

Fatino also had to learn how to work with limited room space.

"Barry's research showed that of the time business travelers spend in the room, most of it is in bed," she says, "so he wanted to give them a great bed." And no armoire. In its place is a swanky recessed shelving complex of black-stained wood, with cubbyholes for the TV, ice bucket, stereo and more.

"Everything fits perfectly and compactly," says Fatino, "and it's not in the way."

That full-length mirror is not in the way, either, although it leans at an angle against the wall. "I learned that it couldn't stick out into the room more than 7 inches," Fatino reveals. "It's attached to the wall at the top by hinges. It's vacuum-friendly." She demonstrates by lifting the bottom of the mirror, clearing rug space for housekeeping.

Interestingly, that mirror is about the only thing in the room that's nailed down. The beautiful soap and cookie dishes are anchorless, as is the voluptuous ice bucket. Even the hair dryer and makeup mirror are - well, portable or even transportable.

Does the hotel see a problem in that?

"Not really," says W guest services manager Lisa Duncan. "All those items are for sale. Each room has a price list, so if the customer wants to buy something, we can just add it to the room bill." (The room itself will run you $289 to $319 - yes, that's per night.)

Very clever. You might find that soap dish irresistible, and it's a "steal" at $10. The bathrobe goes for $125, should you be so inclined. Even the hangers have a price tag: $5. So from retail "origins" springs a guest room that unobtrusively mimics a selling-floor vignette.

Some aspects of the room design are still being worked out. A luggage bench was missing from the room we explored (although there is plenty of horizontal surface space in the rooms, including a pair of feather and down window-seat-like banquettes in one corner, and huge, deep sills beneath the wood-louvered windows).

For the time being, the spare roll of toilet paper is hidden in the guest room's closet - perhaps because there is zero cabinet space in the ultramodern bathroom with its stainless steel basin set in a glass counter top. The phone book is in the closet, too.

In fact, a style guide has been prepared for the housekeeping staff to follow, to preserve the room's smart layout: The little shampoo bottles are arrayed on the bathroom counter in alignment with one particular bolt. The bathrobe's belt is tied just so. The duvet is tucked in loosely, but not too loosely.

Fatino insists she's as flexible as she is orderly. "I learned panic control here on the job," she says. "I'm not going to freak out because a rug is 2 inches short. It's not the end of the world."

Then, as we walk out of the room past a huge decorative mirror in the hallway, Fatino remarks, "That mirror is too low. I'm going to have it raised."

But she says it very calmly.&lt;

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